This Woman Used a Balloon to Demonstrate What Giving Birth Is Like and Parents-To-Be Are Obsessed

Being pregnant is a really great reminder that you actually don’t know as much as you think you do about what giving birth is like. At least, that’s how it was for me. I knew that contractions are involved and somehow the baby slowly (and probably painfully) makes its way out if you’re having a vaginal birth. Beyond that, I was kind of clueless.

So, when I was induced and my doctor said she was going to strip my membranes, I smiled and nodded along like I knew what the heck she was talking about. (That smile quickly went away when she actually did it—it did not feel OK.) I had a vague idea about cervical dilation—I knew that having my cervix expand meant that things were progressing—but I really didn’t know much beyond that.

I felt pretty embarrassed about how much I didn't know. But when I fessed up to some friends, I realized we were all in the same boat.

That’s probably why this new Facebook and YouTube video from childbirth educator Liz Chalmers is getting so much attention.

In it, Chalmers, a co-owner of Puget Sound Birth Center in Washington State, uses a ping pong ball and balloon to demonstrate what contractions, uterine expansion, and vaginal crowning actually look like. (The balloon is your uterus; the ping pong ball is the baby.)

“My niece in New Zealand mentioned she was planning to teach birth classes in the future, so I gave her some tips, including describing the balloon exercise,” Chalmers tells SELF. “I realized a moving picture paints a thousand words, so I made the video to show her more clearly.” Chalmers says she posted it on her Facebook page, thinking some people might find it helpful. Since then, it’s been viewed more than 2.5 million times.

In the video, Chalmers puts the ball into the balloon, which she then inflates. Then, she squeezes the balloon, simulating Braxton Hicks contractions. “If you just squeeze the sides of balloon like this, not much is happening here to the neck of the balloon, and it’s not opening very much,” she says. The point being that these contractions don’t do much to open up the cervix.

Then, Chalmers points out that “real contractions” happen higher in the uterus, where muscles actually pull on the walls of the uterus. She mimics this by squeezing the top of the balloon until the ball makes its way out of the neck of the balloon (i.e. the vagina), crowns (which is when the baby’s head starts to come out), and then pops out.

People are completely freaking out about the video, because it actually makes the birth process pretty easy to understand.

“I'm a very visual learner and this makes so much more sense than most text I have read explaining this subject! Great analogy!” one person wrote in the comments. “This is BRILLIANT!!! How has this not been used before?” someone else wrote.

Even Chalmers’ comments in the video were eerily similar to what I heard both times I gave birth. “You’re stretching beautifully. Just give it one more push and the baby will be here,” she said soothingly before the “baby” shot out. Seriously, where was this video before I gave birth?

Doctors are into it, too. “This is a great way to explain anatomically how the uterus plays a role in the delivery process and how the cervix dilates,” Jessica Shepherd, M.D., an assistant professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology and director of minimally invasive gynecology at The University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago, tells SELF.

Chalmers says she can’t take credit for the idea: She learned it in a workshop for childbirth educators 11 years ago and has been using it in her classes ever since.

For starters, babies don’t shoot out like a ping pong ball. In reality, it’s more of a slow, sliding out kind of process that speeds up after the head is out. Obviously, that’s tough to replicate with a balloon.

Your cervix also can dilate a lot better than the neck of a balloon and stay dilated, Dr. Shepherd says. “It dilates with more grace,” she adds. Still, Dr. Shepherd says she gets why people are so fascinated by this video. “The whole aspect of childbirth is so magical and mystical that unless you’re there to see it or have gone to medical school, you don’t know all the mechanics of the cervix and uterus,” she says.

It also helps women to understand where certain body parts are located rather than thinking of them as isolated parts of your anatomy. “A lot of times we talk about the cervix and women don’t know where the cervix is,” Dr. Shepherd says. (For the record, it's a circular, narrow tunnel that connects the uterus to the vaginal canal.)

When it comes to preparing for childbirth, some women obsess over every detail while others prefer to go into it just knowing the basics.

I read a bit of a book that was pretty boring, checked out some blog posts, and then figured I’d wing it—and everybody turned out fine. But I have friends who poured over every book they could find. One approach isn't necessarily better than the other—it comes down to your preferences as an individual. “If you want to get into specifics, that’s great,” Dr. Shepherd says. “Just make sure you don’t obsess over what’s happening anatomically and lose that moment.”

But, she adds, it’s good to have a baseline knowledge of the labor process. Not only is it important to have a general idea of what’s happening, it can be a very powerful experience to know all the intense work your body is doing.

Chalmers says she’s heard from people around the world who have found the video helpful, which she says is “unbelievable.” She also hopes there’s some takeaway for expectant parents, too.

“Birth is one of our superpowers,” she says. It may be a simple process, but it's also a lot of work. Luckily, she says, "with good support from people with kind voices, it's not work you need to be afraid of.”